Saturday, September 27, 2014

There is the trademark Bernhardian repetition of phrases; another suicide; and he seemingly sees everything from that "wing chair" -- what more could you ask for?

Excerpt:

I have a gift for behaving in such a way that people leave me alone whenever I wish, and as I sat in the wing chair I showed myself to be a past master in the art of being left alone; people recognized me in the half-light of the anteroom and tried to strike up a conversation, but I at once deterred them simply by remaining seated and pretending not to understand what they said, and then, at precisely the right moment, looking down at the ground instead of into their faces.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

I liked the hyper-parabolic penultimate (doorkeeper, law, K. -- frontloaded in Orson's take) and the ending very much.

From the finale:

He saw how a light flickered on and the two halves of a window opened out, somebody, made weak and thin by the height and the distance, leant suddenly far out from it and stretched his arms out even further. Who was that? A friend? A good person? Somebody who wanted to help? Was he alone? Was it everyone? Would anyone help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? There must have been some. The logic cannot be refuted, but someone who wants to live will not resist it. Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised both hands and spread out all his fingers.

But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.'s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. "Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.

***

Bernhard's The Woodcutters looks promising.

The epigraph (Voltaire):

Being unable to make people more reasonable,

I preferred to be happy away from them.

*

Something that made me smile:

I had once seen this actor at the Burgtheater, many years before, in one of those emetic English society farces the inanity of which is tolerable only because it is English inanity and not the German or Austrian variety, and which have been put on at the Burgtheater again and again with appalling regularity over the past quarter of a century, because during this time the Burgtheater has made a specialty of English inanity and the Viennese public has grown accustomed to it.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Don't forget in proceedings like this there are always lots of different things coming up to talk about, things that you just can't understand with reason alone, you just get too tired and distracted for most things and so, instead, people rely on superstition. I'm talking about the others, but I'm no better myself. One of these superstitions, for example, is that you can learn a lot about the outcome of a defendant's case by looking at his face, especially the shape of his lips. There are lots who believe that, and they said they could see from the shape of your lips that you'd definitely be found guilty very soon.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Been busy (the malcontent Poetry is forced to remain pre-verbal and/or pre-penned). Earlier this week I was walking Charlie (Greenbelt) and saw this fantastic skyscape. Charlie asked me who Norbert was. I responded: "Not totally sure, but he/she is as good as Peekasoo." Charlie seemed somewhat confused.